Apple is #1

Reported today (05/09/11) from Reuters that Apple has surpassed Google as the most valued brand. Google fell to number two after leading the pack for four years.

Apple, the iPhone and iPad maker’s brand, is now worth $153 billion, almost half Apple’s market capitalization. This occurred because Apple’s portfolio of consumer goods propelled it past Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable technology company last year.

Other Brands

Of the top 10 brands in Monday’s report, six were technology and telecoms companies: Google at number two, IBM at number three, Microsoft at number five, AT&T at number seven and China Mobile at number nine.

Here is the list of the top 10 brands.

Apple (Tech)

Google (Tech)

IBM (Tech)

McDonalds (Fast Food)

Microsoft (Tech)

Coca Cola (Drink)

AT&T (Tech)

Marlboro (Tobacco)

China Mobile (Tech)

General Electric (Tech)

What makes Apple stand out? They’ve hit the cord with their customers. Their unique product line, which everyone wants to copy, and which makes their customers happy to own, stands them apart. And oddly enough, the high price of their products is not a dent maker or business killer. Customers see a high price as a differentiator, not a drawback.

It was reported on Reuters that Apple was breaking the rules in terms of its pricing model. Apple is performing in the same way that luxury brands do, where the higher price the brand is, the more it seems to underpin and reinforce the desire for the product.

Blackberry And the Future

However, things don’t look so good for Blackberry. Over the course of the last year, Research In Motion’s (BlackBerry) brand lost twenty percent of its brand value. But among technology companies, only Nokia’s 28 percent decline was steeper.

This lead to the question, where is the technology going? Five years ago, no one foresaw the new products, and new technologies, but with the success of Apple, FaceBook, Twitter, and hundreds of other companies, where will the next innovative technology come from?